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The devil's temptation was as alluring as ever—sweet as honey, yet filled with unspoken implications.
Like arsenic coated in honey.
Deadly poison.
And yet almost no one could resist taking a bite.
The black girl looked at the scar-faced Tinkerer, who seemed untrustworthy at first glance, and then at the smiling demon.
Her life experience wasn't rich enough for her to understand the price hidden behind either choice.
Or perhaps...
She had her own standards.
Slumped against the wall, her strength fading away, she weakly said,
"I don't believe in pure kindness. If all you want is my soul, then you can have it.
"But I want a happy life. I want to be full. I don't want to keep living in the sewers like this, feeling hungry every day. I want a father and a mother. I want someone to love me. I want..."
Mephisto tilted his head toward the man beside him and said provocatively,
"Looks like this deal belongs to me. You're not planning to fight me for it or stop me, are you?"
The Tinkerer remained motionless.
He didn't even shift his feet.
His eyes simply stayed fixed on the black girl as the signs of life gradually faded from her body.
Finding the reaction boring, Mephisto felt somewhat disappointed.
The truth was that he had only come to collect this nearly worthless young soul because of the man standing beside him.
So he decided to provoke him further.
Suddenly, the black girl's unfocused eyes lit up as though she were seeing something.
A trace of vitality returned to her dying body.
She raised a trembling hand toward the air, grasping at something unseen.
"Dad... Mom... Is that you?
"Ah, is this turkey dinner? I've never had any before.
"It's a shame Putz isn't here. Otherwise I could show off to him.
"Dad, Mom, can Putz stay with us? He doesn't have anywhere to go either.
"I miss him..."
At last, her raised arm fell limply to the ground.
Her head drooped.
To the Tinkerer's super-hearing, however, her heartbeat was becoming faster and faster.
The heart was desperately trying to pump more blood throughout her body to meet its needs.
But because of the internal bleeding, large amounts of blood had already left her circulatory system.
No matter how hard her heart worked, it was futile.
Eventually, even the heart itself no longer had enough blood.
Its rhythm began to slow.
Until it stopped altogether.
Then came a sharp ding.
The sound drew the Tinkerer's attention.
Mephisto was casually flipping a coin through the air. The noise had come from his finger launching it upward.
Slipping the coin into his pocket, the demon wore a satisfied expression and casually remarked,
"Kid, I can tell you're not one of those sanctimonious fools who think demons are automatically evil beyond redemption. Interested in making a deal with me?"
However, the moment he sensed something wrong and looked up—
His vision was completely filled by a fist.
It was no different from smashing a watermelon.
The punch instantly exploded the head of Mephisto's avatar.
The Tinkerer felt absolutely no resistance.
Only then did the word leave his mouth:
"Get lost."
The thought and the punch had happened simultaneously.
It was simply that the Tinkerer's fist moved faster than his mouth.
Even faster was his other hand, which had already reached into Mephisto's pocket and snatched the coin.
He had no idea whether Marvel's demons actually transformed human souls into coins.
But stealing it first couldn't hurt.
Or rather, he hadn't thought at all.
He had simply acted.
The headless avatar of Mephisto rapidly turned to ash and vanished.
---
Deep within Hell, the Great Demon suddenly sensed the loss of a sliver of his awareness.
Annoyed, Mephisto grabbed a nearby soul and stuffed it into his mouth, chewing angrily.
"That damned son of a bitch!"
As though venting his frustration, he crushed the soul between sulfur-scented fangs.
The soul screamed in unbearable agony.
It could neither die nor escape.
It could only continue suffering.
Soon, however, Mephisto realized the soul had not been brought back to Hell.
That meant it had been stolen.
Still, souls bound by his contracts were not so easily freed.
Being taken away did not release them from his claim.
Which meant that man would inevitably come looking for him someday—
assuming he cared about that insignificant soul.
The thought actually improved Mephisto's mood.
He broke into a grin.
Then casually grabbed another nearby soul and shoved it into his mouth as well.
---
Back in the real world, the Tinkerer had no idea what exactly had just happened or why he had made the choice he did.
The demon had acted exactly according to his nature.
The girl had indeed felt happiness.
But it was merely an illusion before death.
Could one even say that Mephisto had failed to fulfill her wish?
She had never defined what a happy life actually meant.
At the very least, she had died while feeling happy.
A faint sense of regret filled the Tinkerer's chest.
The aching sensation was unpleasant.
Looking at the coin in his hand, unsure whether it held any significance at all, he carefully placed it in his own pocket for safekeeping.
This wasn't like the helplessness he had felt before absorbing yellow sunlight, when he had been imprisoned in an underground laboratory.
Nor was it like making a terrible decision while fully aware of the consequences and then accepting responsibility afterward.
This...
Had caught him completely off guard.
If he had only witnessed the scene of the girl making a deal with the demon, perhaps he could have calmly turned around and walked away.
But he had meddled.
Using his sparrow spy drone, he had seen too much.
Maybe Alexei's advice had been right after all.
If he wanted to solve his own problems, he should simply grab people, beat them up, and force them to answer his questions.
Knowing too much only created more worries.
The body before him was merely an organic structure made of proteins.
Sooner or later it would return to nature.
But if he left it here, wouldn't it terrify whoever came back and found it?
If he took it away without permission, would someone spend days searching for her?
Or would her companion simply move on and start a new life, eventually forgetting the "friend" who had left him behind?
What was the best choice?
Even his super-brain couldn't find an answer.
For the first time in a long while, the Tinkerer simply stood there blankly, staring at the lifeless body of the girl.
Time passed.
He didn't know how much.
Then suddenly, a shout startled the Kryptonian out of his daze.
"Who are you?! What did you do to Sky?!"
The black girl's companion—the troublesome brat who had recently become so enthusiastic about causing him headaches—had finally returned.
Before the Tinkerer could decide on the most appropriate course of action, the boy had already witnessed the heartbreaking scene.
Death was nothing unfamiliar to those who lived in the sewers.
The moment Putz got close enough, he understood exactly what had happened.
He let out a cry of grief and turned toward the only living person present.
"Did you kill her?!
"Murderer!
"Why did you hurt Sky?!"
Wiping away the makeup on his face and removing his wig, the man revealed his true appearance.
Though he hadn't changed his clothes, Putz recognized him immediately.
"You came for revenge, didn't you?!
"If that's the case, you should've come after me!
"Why hurt someone who had nothing to do with it?!"
As he spoke, he pulled a knife from his pocket and stabbed fiercely toward the restored figure of Henry Brown.
Henry neither dodged nor defended himself.
Even so, the knife failed to pierce his skin.
Instead, because the child used too much force, his hand slipped along the blade and cut itself.
Grabbing the injured boy in one hand, Henry said,
"I didn't do this.
"If I had, why would I still be standing here? Why would I reveal my face in front of you instead of running away?"
The boy dropped the knife from the pain, but he continued struggling wildly in Henry's grip.
"How should I know what you're thinking, you bad guy?!"
"I'm certainly not a good person," Henry admitted.
"But the trouble you caused isn't enough for me to go this far.
"You don't need to think I'm lying.
"You're simply not important enough for me to do something like that."
After letting the child go, Henry stared at him and said,
"Before you came back, I was considering whether I should bury her first.
"Since you've seen her now, that means the two of you deserve time to say goodbye.
"So what's it going to be?
"Are you coming with me?
"Or are you going to stand here being angry?"
No matter how unwilling he was, the child gritted his teeth and replied,
"I'm coming."
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